Operation Omniscience

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Stuttgart, 01:15, 12Mar42

“Ich hab’s gefunden!” the soldier whispered to himself as he stuffed the fluorescently glowing canister into his satchel.

Wilmot Schröder hurried along and heaved himself up and over what used to be the outer wall of Stuttgart’s most infamous Nazi research lab. It was now just a blackened mass of crushed concrete and twisted metal.  The night air carried with it no sound, nor smell, nor scent of life.  Putting out of commission Das Schloss, as the facility had come to be known by the Allied Forces, was no small challenge to the Allies or the Merc Squads that had assaulted it. Finally, a well-timed bombing raid proved successful in destroying the stronghold.

Schröder felt his bag to ensure that the canister was still there. It was the final component to his Dr. Merken’s masterpiece.  He thanked the Almighty he hadn’t had to use his pistol this time and disappeared into the night.

Ulm, 06:53, 12Mar42

“Where in the hell is that bastard?  He should have been here well over an hour ago!”  Professor Merken tapped his reading glasses against the instrument-laden table as he cursed his Vaterland-loving assistant in English.  Tomorrow it would most likely be French.  Merken appreciated the Nazis’ sense of scientific exploration, but didn’t give a damn about Greater Germany, the 3rd Reich or anything outside of his current legacy-in-the-making…The Viewer.

The door burst open and an exhausted Wilmot Schröder stumbled in, collapsing on the floor.  “Was ist passiert??” Merken demanded to know what had happened, though did not wish to waste any time with the boy’s pathetic English.

The boy, no more than 17, coughed up bright red blood onto the floor.  Between spats of blood and bile, he mouthed the word “Amerikaner”.

“Did you bring the battery?  Die Batterie.  Hast du die Batterie mitgebracht?” Professor Merken watched as Schröder’s life fled from his broken body.  There was little chance that Americans had actually wasted a bullet on his assistant.  Most likely it was a hunting party, little more than a band of thieves lurking in the dark forest between the Grand Research Facility and the small, private lab Merken called home.  He dug through the torn backpack, hoping to hell the battery hadn’t gotten lost or stolen.

“Yes.”  Merken felt the warmth of the alien device as he withdrew it and tossed the grungy bag aside.  “All this trouble for such a small piece of space rock.”  The professor looked at the metallic object, briefly forgetting the urgency of the moment.  The loud bell of the antique Swiss clock in the corner striking 7:00 am snapped him out of the hypnotic sway the object had held over him.  “Scheiße.”

The door opened and in stepped a highly decorated Gruppenführer of the SS.  “Heil Hitler,” he began, stepping over the dead assistant’s body without so much as a courtesy glance.  This guy was a real son-of-a-bitch.

Merken let a quiet Heil Hitler escape his throat.  “Good morning, Herr Schultz.”

“Is it ready?”  Straight to business.

“Almost.  My aide there brought the final piece to this puzzle just a few minutes ago,” Professor Merken explained as he nodded his head in Schröder’s general direction.

“Finish the assembly so I can get the hell out of this shithole you call a lab.”

“Yes, sir,” answered the frustrated and pressured scientist.  If everything wasn’t aligned perfectly, the device wouldn’t work.  “It’ll only take me a few minutes, then I’ll make sure my theories are correct…which they are.” Merken let that last sentence trail off into silence.

“Will this thing really do what you say?  Will it really open a portal to another dimension or are you just full of shit?”  Schultz had mastered the English curse words early in his studies, as he found English the perfect language in which to degrade someone.

Quite irritated now, Merken ran through the instructions to the obtuse officer who couldn’t see past the tip of his patriotic nose.  “No, it doesn’t open a portal…sir.  The Viewer allows the operator to instantaneously observe events as they unfold in parallel universes.  It’s the most perfect piece of reconnaissance equipment ever imagined.”

Merken tightened the final bolt and stepped back to enjoy the beauty of his new masterpiece.  He then placed his forehead against the leather strap designed exactly for that purpose and flipped on the machine.

“Scheiss—!” he screamed before falling completely silent and motionless for several seconds.  The SS Officer hurried to the machine and grasped the scientist’s shoulder but was shocked violently by a buildup of electric charge around the man.

Merken regained use of his motor skills and awareness as he removed his head from the device.

“You’re as white as my grandfather’s hair.  What’s wrong?” asked Schultz.  “Does it work?”

Merken stumbled slowly backward toward his fallen comrade lying on the floor of the modest lab, oozing what little blood remained in him.  “Yes…in a manner of speaking,” began the distracted man.

“What did you see?” Schultz demanded.

“I saw…well, that…” Merken grabbed the assistant’s Luger and quickly pointed it at the officer’s head.  “I saw that this is the only way I’m getting out of here alive.  In those few seconds I observed 14 different universes.  This is the only way I’m getting out of here.  You could have had this device to monitor Allied troop movements, figure out how to end this stalemate, get rid of those fucking aliens…anything…but you were going to kill me.”

“That’s the way things are done, Merken.  You can kill me, but there are many more of us than there are of you.  I can find a hundred assholes on the street that can do your job.  Why do you think we made you work in this rubble heap of a lab?  You’re nothing.”

“Fuck you.” He squeezed, and the Luger made a small pop. Five grams of lead flew into the waiting head of the German officer.  The bullet ripped the man’s eye apart and turned the right half of his brain to mush before bursting through the back of his skull, letting gray matter and blood splash against the floor and wall of the tiny work space.  Merken dropped the gun and grabbed his invention, rushing headlong into the night.

Algeria, 15:44, 08May42

“Sir, something’s cresting the hill.”

“I see it.  Looks like some sort of machine.  Sergeant, take a squad and flank it from the south.  I’ll stay here and confront it head on.”

As Staff Sergeant Young rounded up bravo section, Captain Trent and his soldiers took position behind some trashed mud huts.  They watched as a mechanic exosuit smoothly made its way down the hill and towards the waiting ambush.  In the middle of the battlefield the suit stopped and remained motionless for a few seconds, then animated again as a crackling spark of blue light traveled quickly from the suit into the ground.

“What the hell was that?” asked Corporal Jeffries.

Captain Trent shook his head, “No idea.”

The exosuit bolted toward the waiting soldiers and let loose a flurry of rocket-propelled grenades to the south from the launcher attached to its left arm.  As the grenades landed, Captain Trent heard cries of agony over the radio.

“How the hell did he know they were there?” asked Jeffries as the squad relinquished their hiding places and leapt into the open, releasing a barrage of gunfire at the mechanical monster.  Whoever was operating the suit knew exactly where to run and when to duck.

“This isn’t working, sir,” cried a private seconds before a bullet found its way through his neck.

“My God.  It must be one of the Fox’s new super soldiers,” said Trent.  “It doesn’t have any Nazi markings, though.”  He dodged the gunfire and falling soldiers as he a bee-line for the radio operator, who had gotten separated from the officer at the onset of the battle.  Reaching for the radio, Trent switched frequencies and managed to utter one sentence before his life ended.

“Germans have super soldier able to see the future…